The country is Hindu majority, but the government seems eager to court the huge Muslim populace at election time, no matter how troubling the demandsDavid Remnick, New Yorker

"They are one more weapon in the state's armoury to infantalise citizens and stymie civil society."

The Asian Age added its voice with the headline: "Bonfire of sanity in Jaipur".

"The Rushdie affair is one more example of the victory of intolerance in India, further shrinking an already withering liberal space in this country," the newspaper said.

"And governments are always ready to pander to troublemakers, particularly, it seems, when there are elections in the air ... From banning books and films, we have now moved to banning people."

Mint newspaper said the Jaipur episode was a "worrying trend".

"Not just is the Indian state keen to curtail freedom of expression - as evident in efforts to muzzle the internet - but it is also happy to pander to zealots, bigots, the paid hirelings of political parties and just about anyone opposed to any form of free expression," the newspaper said.

Writing in Business Standard, literary critic Nilanjana S Roy said The Satanic Verses "cannot be unwritten, and its ideas cannot be erased".

"The central fact of the Verses is not that it's blasphemous; it's that the book argues that religion may be no more than the creation of humans and may be questioned as such," she wrote.

"The shameful episode in Jaipur is, indeed, best seen in light of deeper, and troubling, tendencies of contemporary Indian politics," Mr Remnick wrote in the New Yorker.

"The country is Hindu majority, but the government seems eager to court the huge Muslim populace at election time, no matter how troubling the demands."

Mr Remnick said the "fear of clerical protest animates the current Indian government, which is far more interested in retaining power than in freedom of expression, much less making life pleasant for Salman Rushdie and his readers".